- Oct 23, 2012
- 12,527
Microsoft officially pulled the plug on Windows XP in April 2014 and since then, the company and its partners tried to work together with users and organizations worldwide to help them migrate to a newer operating system, and if necessary, to upgrade their computers.
Obviously, you would expect the US government, which tries to be a pioneer in terms of new technology adoption, to run the very latest operating system on its computers, but it appears that this isn't really the case.
Dawn Leaf, chief information officer at the Department of Labor, has revealed at Cloud Expo 2015 that some agencies are still running Windows XP, despite all efforts to upgrade all computers.
The security risks of staying with XP
Leaf hasn't detailed why exactly it actually takes so long to upgrade Windows XP computers and whether there's a plan in place to move these agencies to a newer operating system, but there's no doubt that running outdated software on government PCs isn't really the smartest thing to do.
Since April 2014, when Windows XP officially came to an end, users running this particular OS were left out in the cold and no updates were released to correct bugs and security issues that were discovered in other OS versions and which most likely existed in XP as well.
Obviously, unpatched software leads to more security vulnerabilities on a certain computer, and when this computer is being used by the United States government, things are getting even worse.
Needless to say, there are plenty of other alternatives out there, and Microsoft says that all computers should be upgraded to Windows 7 or 8.1 as fast as possible, so it's hard to find a reason for staying on Windows XP right now.
Some claim that it's too expensive to upgrade because old hardware is no longer supported, others say that Windows 7 and 8.1 bring nothing new to the table, but whatever the reason, there's no doubt that Windows XP is getting more vulnerable every day.
Obviously, you would expect the US government, which tries to be a pioneer in terms of new technology adoption, to run the very latest operating system on its computers, but it appears that this isn't really the case.
Dawn Leaf, chief information officer at the Department of Labor, has revealed at Cloud Expo 2015 that some agencies are still running Windows XP, despite all efforts to upgrade all computers.
The security risks of staying with XP
Leaf hasn't detailed why exactly it actually takes so long to upgrade Windows XP computers and whether there's a plan in place to move these agencies to a newer operating system, but there's no doubt that running outdated software on government PCs isn't really the smartest thing to do.
Since April 2014, when Windows XP officially came to an end, users running this particular OS were left out in the cold and no updates were released to correct bugs and security issues that were discovered in other OS versions and which most likely existed in XP as well.
Obviously, unpatched software leads to more security vulnerabilities on a certain computer, and when this computer is being used by the United States government, things are getting even worse.
Needless to say, there are plenty of other alternatives out there, and Microsoft says that all computers should be upgraded to Windows 7 or 8.1 as fast as possible, so it's hard to find a reason for staying on Windows XP right now.
Some claim that it's too expensive to upgrade because old hardware is no longer supported, others say that Windows 7 and 8.1 bring nothing new to the table, but whatever the reason, there's no doubt that Windows XP is getting more vulnerable every day.
